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Using the Real ntfs.sys Driver Under Linux

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the some-serious-duct-tape dept.

caseih writes "A very neat hack uses the real ntfs.sys driver (obtained from your own windows XP partition and used via a wine-like layer (borrowed from ReactOS) to mount an ntfs partion with full read/write access. While not an ideal solution and certainly not free as in speech, this is an ideal stop-gap measure for many people trying out linux. I think that we'll probably see this in Knoppix pretty soon."

4 of 548 comments (clear)

  1. Hackeroo! by MarkWPiper · · Score: 2, Redundant

    Maybe it could use the existing ntfs vfs to get the ntfs.sys of the partition, and then load it.

  2. Re:To all the "can't go in Knoppix" posters by ceswiedler · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Of course, there's a chicken-and-egg problem there, but fortunately there's a pretty stable read-only Linux driver for NTFS. So Knoppix would use the free Linux NTFS driver to load the writeable NTFS driver from your NTFS partition...Yes, that would be very cool, because it could happen very automatically.

  3. You need to get ntfs.sys legally somehow by dido · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Otherwise, you'll get sued by Microsoft for copyright infringement. I doubt we'll ever legally see it work on Knoppix or similar distros for that reason. How would you be able to get a copy of ntfs.sys from within, say, a loaded and running Knoppix without first mounting the NTFS partition in the first place? Well, probably the in-kernel read-only driver could get ntfs.sys from some other NTFS partition, copy that file into a ramdisk, then remount using ntfs.sys. Still sounds like a monstrously klugy solution, and one that will make life difficult for the users of a CD distribution like Knoppix.

    It's not like ntfs.sys is readily distributable free of charge like the Win32 codec DLL's are, right? Or is it?

    The best solution would really to get write support on NTFS working. That would get rid of this kluge to avoid copyright infringement.

    --
    Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  4. Re:Linux File System? by Xavier · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Cannot figure if it's a joke or what ...

    In case it's not :
    Linux can, but generally do not run using FAT32.
    It can read and write on such FAT32 file systems, but generally Linux runs using filesystems like Ext2, Ext3, ResierFS, and so on, most of them being journalized.

    Just my 0.0002

    X.